Sitting by his dying wife’s hospital bed, husband Mike Leblanc was told he would have to sit and watch his wife’s heart “explode” if he didn’t let nurse Joanna Flynn shut off the ailing woman’s life support, a jury heard Thursday.

Former Midland nurse Flynn, 51, is on trial for manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death for pulling the plug on patient Deanna Leblanc.

The jury heard Leblanc, 39, woke suddenly in her bed at 4 a.m. March 2, 2014 and called to her husband: “I’m dying!”

Mike Leblanc bounded to her bedside to find her sweating and grey. He called 911 and minutes later she went into a seizure.

By the time she reached Midland hospital her vital signs were absent. For 2 1/2 hours, doctors and nurses worked frantically to resuscitate her. Chemicals were used to get her heart beating and she was put on a ventilator.

“Don’t give up hope,” at least one doctor told the husband, court heard.

At 7 p.m. that evening, Flynn began her night shift. An hour later, Leblanc was dead.

“Nurse Flynn told Mr. Leblanc that there was no hope; that she was already looking down from heaven and never coming back; that she was brain dead,” said Crown attorney Sarah Tarcza in her opening to the jury. “She told him if he did nothing, he would watch his wife’s heart explode ... It was under these circumstances that he acquiesced.”

There is no question that Flynn was the one who reached out and shut off the life support without a doctor’s order, hastening the death of Deanna Leblanc — that is admitted in this trial.

“There will be ethical, moral and philosophical issues in this case,” said Tarcza. “We intend to show Joanna Flynn overstepped her role by terminating life support without a doctor’s order ... and she coerced her husband to agree.”

Dr. Gert van Rooyen testified he had to resuscitate Leblanc at least five times in the trauma room. She was given six litres of fluid and two units of blood.

The doctor agreed with defence lawyer Samantha Peeris that he had no expectation Leblanc would live, adding she was brain dead.